The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors having signal and ground contacts.
Some communication systems utilize electrical connectors mounted to a circuit board to interconnect other components for data communication. For example, the electrical connector may include a housing holding contacts terminated to the circuit board. The housing and contacts define a mating interface for mating with a mating connector such as a circuit card, a plug connector, and the like for connecting such mating connector to the circuit board. Some known electrical connectors have performance problems, particularly when transmitting at high data rates. For example, the electrical connectors typically utilize differential pair signal contacts to transfer high speed signals. Ground contacts improve signal integrity. However, electrical performance of known communication connectors, when transmitting the high data rates, is inhibited by noise from cross-talk and by return loss. Such issues are more problematic with small pitch high speed data connectors, which are noisy and exhibit higher than desirable return loss due to the close proximity of signal and ground contacts. Energy from ground contacts on either side of the signal pair may be reflected in the space between the ground contacts and such noise results in reduced connector performance and throughput.
A need remains for a high density, high speed electrical connector having reliable performance.